The Basics
- Niels Bohr was a Danish physicist who made important discoveries in the fie
lds of atomic structure and quantum mechanics. - He worked on the top secret "Manhattan Project" during World War II to develop the first atomic bomb. He then worked on the use of peaceful nuclear energy.
- Bohrs work with atoms led him to suggest that electrons could not just orbit the nucleus anywhere they wanted, they had to be a specific distance away from the nucleus.
- This inspired the new atomic model.
Bohr's Model of the Atom
- Rutherford proved that electrons orbited the nucleus but he did not state the distance of the orbit.
- Bohr showed that electrons had to orbit at specific distances from the atom like so:
- These layers or distances are called electron shells. You can think of an electron orbiting the nucleus like planets orbiting the sun. Each planet or electron is a specific distance from the center.
